Next Tuesday I’m hosting a free workshop about putting Christ back in your Christmas. During that workshop, I’ll be giving away a copy of our Christmas Celebrations ebook.
Christmas Celebrations: Advent,Christmas & Epiphany is a book I wrote because our society has taken Christ out of Christmas.
In my own home town, the Office Depot clerk remarked on her headset they could not wish customers “Merry Christmas”. She went on to say, she could wish them “Happy Hanukah, Holiday, Kwanzaa” or whatever else!
Let’s put Christ back in our Christmas celebrations with family traditions and activities that are meaningful. This book is full of ideas for you.
You can register for this free workshop by clicking here.
You can also join our free workshop on Tuesday, at 8pm YOUR time zone and get our Free Advent Countdown.
- How an ordinary family overcame the crass commercialism of America’s Christmas season
- The 4 tips of reaching outside your family during the Christmas season.
- The 3 steps to putting Christ and “His Story” back into your Christmas celebration
- Christmas around the world activities & ideas
- The dangers of America’s Christmas celebration
- Symbols of Christmas & their Christian meaning
- As many different ideas that your family can implement as I could squeeze into 60 minutes!
- The biggest obstacles that stand between you and a meaningful Christmas season with your own kids
P.S. – You can sign up to win by leaving a comment on this blog post. Just share a family tradition during Advent or Christmas.
40 Comments
We always read the “Christmas Story” before we open gifts in the morning.
we do so much to celebrate Jesus’s birth. we put up the nativity and the advent wreath. we make cookies to give to our neibors and friends. we make gifts for Jesus to put under the tree. I love Christmas.
Sounds like a great way to celebrate Jesus’ birth
We have many family traditions during the holiday. We put up a Jesse Tree every year. Here is a link to last year’s post I wrote about the topic http://totplay.blogspot.com/2012/12/our-christmas-traditions-jesse-tree.html. We also create a Christmas Book Tree leading up to Christmas Day. I am trying to use more books that are “Christ” centered or focus on themes I feel would be appropriate. This is seriously one of my family’s FAVORITE Christmas traditions!!! I always give my daughter a brand new meaningful book that focuses on the true meaning of Christmas on Christmas Day to open as one of her gifts. I am trying to replace the Christmas books I have collected over the years with more relevant ones. Here is the post I wrote last year about this tradition http://totplay.blogspot.com/2012/12/christmas-traditions-25-days-to.html. I would love for you to stop by and leave a comment if you feel inspired to. Every year is a little different yet full of surprises! God bless you all!
Because I was not brought up in a home that put Christ in Christmas, I’ve tried to make that the focus of our home for my daughter. We like to do Advent devotionals such as Jotham’s Journey and advent countdowns such as adding a piece to our advent nativity and collecting coins with FAIR’s Christmas calendar.
Jotham’s Journey is one of our family’s all-time read alouds…
We love Christmas here. Before the holiday reaches us, we go through old toys and donate the ones that are still in good play shape. We also donate to the local food bank. I do this to help my children remember that not everyone has as much as we do even when it seems that we don’t have much either. Here. Christmas is more about giving than receiving.
What a great idea. We have a local radio station that collects gently used toys & new ones for at-risk kids.
Every year we share the story of the gifts Jesus received of gold, myrrh and frankincense. We exchange gifts with the same first letters: Garment (new clothes, shoes, jewelry), musical/mentally stimulating (books, Legos, iTunes money) and fun (toys, recreational, household goods). This has helped us keep our minds on what we should be giving to others after a year full of God’s blessings!
We do the Jesse Tree each year. We find service opportunities. We participate in Operation Christmas Child, Toys for Tots, the Angel Tree, and whatever other opportunities are presented. We go to many church related events.
Our children are small – 3 & 1 so we are trying to establish Christmas traditions and one thing we did last year was select toys to give away. We also read the Christmas story in the morning before presents. I’d like to take turns opening gifts this year instead of rushing through them. There is no Santa in our home, just Jesus’ birthday. I’d like to have the boys help make a cake for Jesus’ birthday and it can be a special treat to eat on Christmas morning! 😉
We adopt a family at our church and buy gifts for them, wrap the gifts and then deliver them. We also host a Happy Birthday Jesus party for friends to share in an evening of singing carols, sharing food and reading the Christmas story. On Christmas day the children make a cake and decorate it and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus,.read the Christmas story and write down one thing we will give Jesus this year, examples could be, more of my time to read his word, my.grumpiness, etc. During the month we also visit a Living Nativity. We also try and visit a nursing home, sing Christmas carols, pass out candy canes and read the Christmas story outloud.
We adopt a family at church to buy gifts for and always read stories about Christ=)
We have a ‘soft’ nativity that the kids can handle without fear of breaking. We add the pieces throughout the month of December. Baby Jesus is added Christmas morning.
In our homeschool, our entire focus changes during Advent. We make our Jesse Tree, we read special books everyday, do deeds for others, etc.
On Christmas Eve we gather around the fireplace and everyone gets a white rose or poinsettia flower. We sing the song “There is a Rose in Bethleham” and then take turns dropping a petal and thanking God for who He is and for our blessings. All four children and all adults can participate. We then put the nativity in that area without the baby Jesus. The children go to bed and in the morning when they come downstairs the baby Jesus is there in His spot and we read the Christmas story from the bible.
Some of our favorite traditions are driving around town to look at the lights and reading from the Bible the birth of Jesus every night the week before Christmas during our devotions. This year we hope to start a new tradition now that our oldest is 6 and that is to fix a plate of goodies for neighbors with a homemade card with scripture and the story of Jesus.
Christ IS Christmas! Thanks for sharing!!
Simple things are the best way for our family to focus on Christ. With so many different ages and schedules we just need a few things that can bring us all together to celebrate. My favorite is our advent wreath because it also brings back memories of my own childhood. Then there’s time spent together making cookies and fun decorations. The best Christmas discussions start here!
It’s so important to keep it SIMPLE
I have an almost-3-year-old who is starting to understand more about Christmas. We will have an advent calendar, read the story of Jesus’ birth (which we already do, but we’ll connect it to Christmas), and answer all his questions – which are many! 🙂
What a fun time to introduce traditions. I’ll be posting some resources for preschoolers & Christmas shortly
We always had a ceramic when I was a child which is BEAUTIFUL but kind of puts the whole reason for the season at a distance for small children. So when I had my kids, I bought the toy version and we read Luke from their storybook bible and from our bible and play through the events surrounding the birth of our Savior!
My mom made my kids a stuffed nativity. They loved playing with it.
there is so much i will like to share but don’t have the time so our favorite tradition now started not on purpose we have 7 children and we are homeschoolers so one income right , but allot of financial problems so Christmas has being really hard for us , but we beginning just trusting God to bless our children , and God move us not to try but to release it to him and every year sends we do that the kid dont make christmas list (they do pray for things) But we just pray one year someone we have never meet came to our door and give us 600 dollars (with it we cover some bills, christmas dinner, toys etc.)every year has being different and different people mostly we have never meet . When fall rolls around the kids start talking about how they wonder what GOD is going to do this year .This year we just move , and my husband has a new job and our new tradition will begin which is to allow GOD to use us to bless other
God has blessed us to be able to take gifts & food to families in our church who need a little extra help. Enjoy this year
Every five years we make new stocking to show how we have all grown. Then we pick a charity to donate to for the next five years.
Wow! My kids still have the same stocking my mom made them as babies. What a good idea
Our new favorite “tradition” is reading Jotham’s Journey together during the advent season. It is an amazing story that really brings the nativity to life. We love Christ therefore we love Christmas! We all take time to make gifts for each of our friends. It becomes a great time to fellowship as we work on our crafts and share ideas. Of course, all this is done while drinking hot chocolate and listening to CHIRSTmas music 🙂
Jotham’s Journey is one of our family favorites!
We try to keep things very simple. One thing we’ve always done is make sure that we read the passage in Luke about Christ’s birth before we eat Christmas dinner.
We are similar, but read it after Christmas Eve dinner. That’s when we have our big dinner
We write Christmas letters to each other. It has been my favorite Christmas tradition. I look forward to letters from my children and my husband.
I wish I could make it to the workshop. Schedule conflict. 🙁
I love it…I’ll be sharing it with my kids to use with their families.
We have a replay if you’d like to watch it. Just sign up for the replay below
We celebrate St. Lucias Day…we share her story, make candle wreath headbands, and bake braided sweet bread..fun and meaningful Advent tradition.
St Lucia was Gentry’s favorite. She dressed up & served her siblings in bed
We have homemade ravioli dinner on Christmas Eve, thanks to the hard work of BIL and SIL, with family and friends. After dinner BIL reads the Christmas story in Luke – with his almost white beard and mustache, large stomach, and ‘grandpa’ reading glasses, he looks a lot like Santa! We love hearing the story of Christ’s birth all the way to the gifts from the wise men, then open a few gifts and snack on all kinds of desserts with love and fellowship.
Homemade ravioli sounds delicious. Can you share your recipe?
On Christmas Eve, midnight.. each member of the family will participate: from age 4 my son has read Luke 2, in English and Spanish from our family Bible (it was a wedding gift from our church family in 1979). My daughter prays for each of us as she distributes the gifts. After gift giving time, we join hands and thank God for the gifts and for the past year. I then pray for each of us and the year to come. We then ask any guests for prayer requests as well as for each of them to pray if they wish. It humbles and surprises me to see how most of them really want to participate in our ‘home Christmas’. When my husband was here he would start the musical part of our celebration. We have made beautiful memories and started traditions that my married son has carried into his own marriage..and hopes to start new traditions with…my grandkids…yay! I have lots of our Christmas photos and home movies that I hope to share with my grandkids. God is faithful! Praise Jesus.
Beautiful tradition! I’ve been trying to read my Spanish Bible to learn Spanish. Some chapters are easier than others 🙂